The expedition’s master-mind and leader, Professor Jim Pulcrano, filters each year through over 120 aspiring entrepreneurs who apply to the IMD Startup competition. With inputs from CTI/KTI, VentureKick and investiere, 25 fortunate ventures are selected to work with IMD’s MBA and Executive MBA participants.

In the most recent 2016 Swiss Top 100 report, IMD Executive MBAs have worked with 31 of the top 100. Five of the start-ups are in the top 10, and 11 in the top 25. In September 2016, the IMD EMBA class on a discovery expedition to Silicon Valley worked with BestMile (#13), Polyneuron Pharmaceuticals AG (#22), Peripal (#57), Prodibi (#64) and ZuriMED Technologies AGZ (#73). Following the selection process, Jim introduced the startups to the Executive MBA participants – a group of highly talented and experienced international executives, who together analyze and challenge business plans, teams and company strategies for several months. The pinnacle of the experience is six days in Silicon Valley, as the Swiss entrepreneurs and participants travel to meet venture capitalists and angels awaiting to hear fundraising pitches – and hoping to invest.

“Some people have said that what we ask our EMBAs to do in Silicon Valley is impossible,” Jim Pulcrano said. “Putting them in the shoes of high-tech entrepreneurs and having them pitch their businesses to Silicon Valley venture Capitalists. It’s real, and it works, and every year I have the privilege of watching our EMBAs rise to that impossible challenge and do a great job.”

Jim and the EMBA faculty seek to explore with the participants the mindset of the entrepreneur – an essential objective for any manager. Through the expedition, the EMBAs meet with the people who create, execute, grow and finance new firms. They seem to speak a different language and move at a different speed. Participants are helped to develop a sense of how to create an environment that enables entrepreneurial behavior, drives new-idea generation and assesses chances of success in the marketplace.

Here are examples of previous Executive MBA competition winners, having shown that they have what it takes to “create something from nothing”: